False Alarm?

Having presented a plethora of cases which seem to support the notion that climate change is capable of triggering geological hazards, I would like to reiterate the facts expressed by non-believers.

1. Whilst the effects of climate change on seismic activity in the past may be more-or-less confirmed via paleo records, we are yet to quantify how much seismic activity to expect as a result of contemporary, anthropogenic climate change.

2.  No one has tried to deny that any foreseeable ramification will not impact the majority. Both Bill McGuire of UCL and Patrick We of the University of Calgary have stated that so far, the effect has been limited to small, low-level clusters of earthquakes in Alaska and Greenland. Certainly, the crustal rebound theory implies that fracturing can move along a fault to reach places further away from the polar regions, however this is purely speculation and remains untested and unproven.

3. Patrick Wu doubts that deglaciation is powerful enough to trigger a really large quake i.e. magnitude 8 or higher. Meltwater-driven earthquakes tend to be between magnitudes 5 -7.

4. Deglaciation is clearly unable to generate an earthquake in an area that has not undergone some level of seismic activity in the past. Whilst tectonics can actually cause lithospheric fracturing, deglaciation is only able to reactivate a fault and not to create one.

5. Researchers have spotted small, increases in small, localised earthquakes in the far Northern latitudes, but so far the evidence has been far from dramatic or mysterious and can be explained purely by considering the cyclical nature of seismic activity and earthquake clustering.